Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/160

 Quite instinctively she glanced again to see if the neighbors were looking. There were interested faces at several windows. Mrs, Toomey had a sudden feeling of irritation, not with the sentinels doing picket duty but with Kate for tying her horse in front so conspicuously. Mrs. Toomey shrank from the staring eyes as though she had found herself walking down the middle of the road in her underclothing.

The feeling vanished when Kate came up the walk slowly and she saw how white and haggard the girl's face was.

Mrs. Toomey opened the door and asked her in nervously.

Kate looked at her wistfully as though she yearned for some display of affection beyond the conventional greeting, but since Mrs. Toomey did not offer to kiss her she sank into a chair with a suggestion of weariness.

"I hope you're not busy — that I'm not bothering?"

"Oh, no not at all."

"I couldn't help coming, somehow — I just couldn't go back without seeing you. I wanted to see a friendly face — to hear a friendly voice." She clasped her fingers tightly together : " Oh, you don't know how much you mean to me ! I feel so alone — adrift — and I long so for some one to lean on, just for a little, until I get my bearings. It seems as though every atom of courage and confidence had oozed- out of me. I don't believe that ever again in all my life I'll long for sympathy as I do this minute." She spoke slowly with breaths between, as though the heaviness of her heart made talking an effort.

"I presume you miss your uncle." There was a constraint in Mrs. Toomey's voice and manner which Kate was too engrossed and wretched to notice.